206 Hoffman

[MichaelB]

HOFFMAN
(Alvin Rakoff, 1970)
Release date: 17 January 2022
Limited Edition Blu-ray (World Blu-ray premiere)

Pre-order here

One of the most unsettling films in the Peter Sellers canon, Hoffman sees the actor in a sinister starring role as a bachelor who obsesses over his secretary (Sinéad Cusack, Tam Lin, Revenge) and, discovering that her boyfriend (Jeremy Bulloch, The Spy Who Loved Me) has been fiddling the books at work, blackmails her into spending a week with him. Their time together reveals Hoffman’s tragic, lonely existence.

Alvin Rakoff (Death Ship) directs a film which is by turns amusing, poignant and uneasy, and which boasts a central performance so uncomfortable and revealing that its star tried to have the film’s negative destroyed. Hoffman makes its worldwide debut on Blu-ray.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES


• New restoration from a 4K scan of the original negative by Powerhouse Films
• Original mono audio
• Selected scenes commentary with director Alvin Rakoff (2022)
• New interview with Alvin Rakoff (2022)
• New interview with focus puller Eddie Collins (2022)
• New interview with draughtsman Terry Ackland-Snow (2022)
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by John Rain, archival interviews with Peter Sellers and Sinéad Cusack, a look at author Ernest Gébler’s multiple iterations of the Hoffman story, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• World premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 2,000 copies
• Extras subject to change

#PHILTD206
BBFC cert: 15
REGION A/B
EAN: 5060697921168

[colinr0380]

This release is interestingly timed, as the 12th August edition of the BBC's recently axed Film Programme devoted a whole episode to an interview with the 94 year old Alvin Rakoff on the occasion of the publication of his autobiography "I'm Just The Guy Who Says Action". That interview covered Rakoff's whole career (though with no mention of the only film of his that I was previously familiar with, 1980's Death Ship) including a fair bit about Hoffman. Just going by that Film Programme interview it sounds as if there will be a lot of material to make for a fascinating set of extras, covering such topics as the original stage production having Donald Pleasence in the main role, who was originally going to reprise the role in the film version until the budget was raised which mandated a star name, with Sellers being brought in. Who apparently promptly fired Rakoff, but then balked at paying Rakoff's fee for dismissal without reason and decided instead of paying it to bring him back on and work with him instead! Both Rakoff and Sellers apparently became very good friends during the shoot but according to Rakoff in that interview Sellers became more and more uneasy with the material of the film being too close to home such that he had to denounce the film as a failure after it was released, and then they seemingly never were in contact again.

It's not Rakoff's favourite film that he made (he says that it was the Laurence Olivier starring A Voyage Around My Father), but he seems to think highly of it despite the behind the scenes travails, even tearing up at the remembrance of his lost friendship with the troubled Sellers at one point.

[MichaelB]

He repeats pretty much all of what you've said in the commentary.

[MichaelB]

Full specs:



This will be released in North America as well, with their own separate print run of 2,000. Note that unlike the other US/UK titles to date (January and February 2020 releases), this one is simultaneously locked to Regions A and B, so it won't play on unmodified Region C equipment.

[MichaelB]

CineOutsider.